


Ocean Scented Candles in a Room of Rotting Wood

by Claus_Lucas



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Character Study, Coping with trauma, Developing Relationship, F/F, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 22:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8344606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claus_Lucas/pseuds/Claus_Lucas
Summary: While Venus checks on the sirens, Jupiter asks Neptune how she ended up in camp. Neptune tells her a story about a girl caught kissing her best friend at the back of a church and the blood stains that wouldn't come out of the suit; about being dropped during baptism and spending the rest of her life on the verge of drowning.





	

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a year since we know the devil changed my life so here's a little tribute to one of my favorite pieces of media
> 
> [cease to know or to tell or to see or to be your own, have someone else's will as your own](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UiAQmfay8U%22%22)

The house creaks like it’s possessed, a poltergeist in every floorboard, an unnecessarily deep shadow cast by each object. There’s a viscosity to this space, as if infinity were curled into its crannies, stuffed away with all its secrets to rot into the foundations until eventually bursting open. A black hole slumbers beneath our bodies. Pandora’s Box whines gently, cradling calamities that we can’t see but like poison gas will rise from the sawdust to infest our imagination with terrifying visions. It all comes together, an imperfect harmony that tugs at the heartstrings of the most primordial human fears.

Neptune’s hair is an ocean from where I lie, the cold ground supporting my weight while I crane my head sideways to contemplate her visage. Locks cascade down her shoulders and face, but more of it runs wild across the floor, long and undulating as if they were truly waves of water dissipating against a familiar shore. In the gloom everything is dark but her hair is as black as tar.

We’ve only been here for a few minutes but it already feels like an eternity. Not much has happened. Neptune hasn’t looked at me since Venus left to check on the sirens and I haven’t been able to look away from her. That’s fine. This should feel fine. If it doesn’t, I tell myself it’s fine until it’s true.

Neptune is the first to intrude upon the silence with a question. Of course she wouldn’t be affected by the crackling of unacknowledged tension.

“Have you ever read House of Leaves?” she asks. Her arms are folded across her chest, still betraying some level of pent up frustration, passion wasted on hating our situation that could’ve otherwise gone into enjoying life. She speaks in the snap of two fingers, a bolt of lightning making contact with the Earth and then vanishing –it’s exhilarating, and reassuring. Nothing could sneak in from the woods that would make me feel unsafe while I’m in the presence of Neptune. Not even the Devil.

I pull the hair tie around my wrist. A warm jolt travels through my skin when I release it.

“House of Leaves? Never heard of it,” I answer, making my voice casual, in control. I picture myself lying on the beach, listening to the lulling of a tranquil tide. It helps me relax.

I watch Neptune frown. She appears disappointed. Whatever idea she had wished to express easily will now go unappreciated unless she elaborates, and she’s always resentful of having to say more than necessary.

“It’s a book about a house with an endless hallway. It’s a supernatural house,” she says. “Nobody’s sure why or how it exists. I think the reader is supposed to figure that out themself, but I don’t know. All I know is that there’s an endless hallway, which is more of a labyrinth, and the things people imagine can happen while inside actually do. Bad things, usually, because people tend to imagine the worst when confronted with the unknown.”

I listen to the tapestry of her tone, smooth and clear, a single brushstroke. So unlike me, who stutters when I explain and hesitates when prompted for my input. Hearing Neptune speak, watching her perform, it makes me feel strong, as if the illusion of learning from her were attainable. I polish a carbon copy so someday it can take the place of my previous self.

Quiet. She’s quiet after her little monologue. I wonder if it’s my turn. Is she waiting for me to respond? But I can’t read between the lines, decipher where exactly my company should be exalted. Neptune is chewing on her lower lip. She untangles her arms, spreads them out in opposite directions. Perhaps she’s nervous. Perhaps she’s annoyed. At me. She is annoyed at me.

Her head slides sideways, producing a small noise as it halts. She’s facing me now, a smile curling her lips as if they were made for it. I like to think that we’re all made to smile and laugh and sing, and that frowning is just an accident, a temporary misplacement of our facial features.

“I feel like I’m in a goddamn house of leaves,” says Neptune. “This entire fucking camp is a house of leaves.”

Most of the lip gloss she put on washed away with the alcohol but a thin layer of it remains, shimmering pastel pink. I notice because, in the heat of being stared at, I break eye contact like a terrified child on their first day of preschool, hiding behind the skirt of my mother in a vain attempt to make it disappear. I hope she can’t tell that I’m staring at her mouth. It moves in slow motion.

My right index finger twitches. Then it’s my thumb. I’m shaking off an urge brought forth by the proximity between my hand and hers. I want to pull away, force the gap to widen, but a sudden movement like that would just draw attention to why it alarms me. I have to be subtle, tiptoeing around the subject. I’m always tiptoeing around something.

“Don’t you agree?” Neptune asks.

“Camp will end soon. It can’t go on forever,” is the answer I offer.

The skin around her eyes crinkles as the smile broadens. I take comfort in the knowledge that I can at least supply her with temporary amusement.

“After the people left, they always remembered: what they saw, what they felt. They learned something that tarnished their perception of life, made it difficult to continue even though the danger was gone. They were no longer ignorant of a… certain darkness that exists in the world,” says Neptune.

A moment transpires before she adds: “The house. I mean the house.”

I could believe it. In this tiny, moaning room, isolating us from other humans for the reminder of the night, I could imagine myself being transported into an infinite passage where the most terrible of thoughts are projected into reality. Thoughts are kind of like desires, and they come in both positive and negative shades. The worse desires tend to press the hardest, however. I wouldn’t underestimate my desires after that. I’d be significantly more cautious about what I allowed myself to muse over. Well, God can always read my thoughts, so I should be careful anyway.

Venus should be back soon. I feel like he should be back soon. Hopefully the woods haven’t swallowed him. But the sirens would be wailing if anything happened to him, right?

I have to negotiate this time that has been given to me. It’s private, personal. There’s only Neptune and I, basking in this colossal, indefinable presence. Neptune and I are different because while we’re both worried about what’ll happen next she is much more willing to accept it regardless of its contents. I might not be as sturdy as her when the time comes, and that worries me because it means it’ll be all the easier for the devil to pick _me_.

But wouldn’t it be better if I disappeared instead of her? She’d slap me if she could hear my thoughts. I’m ashamed but I can’t stop them. Maybe if I think hard enough it’ll come true?

What’s worse is that I know she feels exactly the same, but not because she thinks I’m worth saving. She just pities me.

“Hey,” I say.

Neptune’s gaze hasn’t left me so I muster the courage to meet it. There’s more I want to say but my throat dries out before I can get to it. I swallow a couple of times before continuing.

“You know how I ended up here. So, you should tell me about yourself.”

Neptune evaluates me with narrowed eyes. The pause feels heavy, like a hand pressed to my chest, pinning me to the ground. I even hold my breath for a few seconds.

Then the seriousness drains from her expression, replaced by a bout of laughter that fizzes in the air. She sits up, legs bent, hands on her knees. Her nails are painted an absorbing shade of navy.

“Are you serious?” she asks. “How _I_ ended up in this place?”

There is an encore to her initial laughter, slightly louder, slightly longer. Her fingers curl into her palms. She shakes her head, helping her hair fall back into a comfortable arrangement.

“That’s a really sorry story,” Neptune admits. “A huge mistake, actually, but I still can’t believe it landed me in this situation. My parents overreacted, blew the whole thing out of proportions! They think they’ve done their part by sending me off to be a summer scout. Joke’s on them, because it did absolutely nothing besides increase my hatred towards everything.”

The exasperation in her tone is unfamiliar. I’m acquainted with her taunting but this is uncharacteristically raw, transformed by no filters, presented purely as it exists inside her. I know so little about her and yet I understand that, like most of us, she resides in several plains of existence at once, her center protected by various layers.

I yearn to pry open the lid, whether it releases monsters, disease, or misfortune. Because hope hums beneath the wood, vibrates and glows. I feel it faintly in my own anatomy, resonating with her chemistry. To her I might simply be a teammate, ascended from the rank of stranger for as long as this camp lasts, dismissed once it has concluded and even forced into forgetfulness by its association with what she loathes so intensely. But I feel the edge of an anchor burrowing into my spine and drops of water steadily altering the shape of my mind. A scar will remain in my memory once her silhouette has moved away.

“You won’t understand if I just tell you, though. Let me show you instead,” Neptune says. Once again, she amazes me with her spontaneity.

Reflexively, I lift myself into a sitting position. By then she has moved towards me and is grabbing both of my hands, pulling me up. I stand, curiosity conveyed by the furrowing of my brows. Her expression is playful, perhaps a bit teasing.

She’s still clasping my hands when she begins her story.

“I was at a wedding,” recites Neptune.

Now she’s grinning without restraint or shame, taking a couple of steps backwards so both our pairs of arms are stretched to their fullest in front of us. She bends slightly, as if about to curtsy, but it’s only for display, a little eye candy to contemplate.

“I was bored. You can imagine. Didn’t care about the bride, didn’t care about the groom. But my best friend was there. We’d been having a good time, joking about this and that. We had to be silent for the ceremony, though, and after that, after we were forced to stand outside in the glaring sunlight, we’d fallen silent. We weren’t sure what to talk about.”

Neptune starts walking in circles, moving for a spell and then stopping She speaks between the intervals. I follow her rhythm, even trying to match the size of her footsteps. I wonder how much of it is unconscious social tendency and how much is that special attention I pay her.

I wish I could snap my hair tie against my wrist.

“My parents were angry because I had tried to attend the wedding in a suit. Their insistence was irksome and only made me more stubborn but I caved in because I was tired of their screaming. My best friend and I joked about me changing into one of the groom’s suits and showing everyone how good I looked in it. We knew the inside of the church was probably empty by then. Everyone was mingling outside.”

Without warning, Neptune changes her course. Now she’s drawing closer.

“We found a suit. As you can imagine, it was too big for me. But I managed to put it on anyway. Felt pretty comfortable, too. My best friend and I then started pretending we were the bride and the groom. We played silly games like those all the time. Stupid, but fun.”

Neptune is near. Anxious, I let go of her hand to grip my arm. My fingers slide downward, brush my hair tie, and then pull. _Snap_ , it comes back, a jolt through my skin. It doesn’t feel warm, just dull.

“Then I kissed her.”

There’s a pause. The cover is melting, the tenderness of true feelings poking through. Neptune tightens her hold on my left hand. Her gaze is lowered. I can feel the tremors of her body through our connection, gentle ripples on the surface of stirred water.

As she recites the final segment, her voice gains strength; humor returns to it.

“It was just pretend. We were playing a game. There was no reason for her to take it seriously. But she did. And she told my parents. And she wouldn’t talk to me for a long time after that. She’s started answering my messages again now, but it’s not like before. Things have changed. She avoids meeting in person.”

She looks like she’s on the verge of telling a clever joke to cover up that sad little episode but she miscalculates her masquerading talents. Her eyes have the glow of headlights veering from a road, bright and blinding in their pursuit of a solid trunk to crash into.

In a murmur, she adds: “The suit was so nice, too. It got ruined by the blood gushing from my nose. She didn’t mean anything by it, of course. She was just surprised. My head just happened to hit something hard enough to make my nose bleed.”

My instinct is to try to comfort her. This rare glimpse of weakness is like irregular patterns drawn by a seismograph, subtle but invoking, testimony of something monumental. My muscles tingle, gearing to go, as if they knew the exact gesture that could keep that wave from receding. But I recognize that it’s a red herring and to chase would only elicit her scorn, more out of shame than disdain, but all the same painful to experience. She threatens without signals, for I know her enough to understand that the little drop of water she has just shed must pull back into the anonymity of a vast sea. Apathy will bleed through her laughter lines and settle, dust on an object that hasn’t been touched in quite a while.

Neptune places her unoccupied hand on her hip. There is no sequel to her sudden bout of sadness. She does not cry. I sense in her opaque eyes that she approves of my decision. Gratitude, bred from relief, is as close as I get to earning her affection.

“How do you think Venus ended up here? We should ask him when he returns,” says Neptune.

A smirk stretches her lips but she hasn’t released my hand. Mixed signals muddle my mind. I search her face for instructions. I hate feeling like a little lamb that can be led by anyone with an ounce of confidence, yet I possess no alternative. I’ve built the greater half of my life on the notion of pleasing others and that can’t be accomplished by doing what I want.

It’s peculiar and ethereal, the moment when mysteries gain an identifiable silhouette. A hoard of alarming details enters my periphery and I want to slam my foot into the break but I am not the designated driver in this vehicle. The sweat oozing from my pores can’t be cleansed with a single swipe. Envisioning myself alone, somewhere far from here, won’t evaporate the blush from my skin. I try to pull my hair tie back but my nails clamp around my wrist, clawing. My mouth hangs open with the certainty that if I speak I will make an absolute fool of myself.

This is a moment that never ends, a feeling that transcends place and participants. Every point in my life where I’ve experienced the same fear aligns to create the illusion of a long dream I haven’t yet awakened from. And the mistakes of all past instances are pounding against my skeleton.

Breakthrough is a blessing and a burden. Being reborn allows me to shed my old skin, but also requires that I reestablish my world vision. No more of those games I dread but am so expertly familiar with. The rules are different now. I can only learn through trial and error.

Neptune’s cheeks are soft. It isn’t readily obvious but she still has a face stocked with baby fat. The tips of my fingers brush her earlobes as I approach, less graceful than I’d like with my features scrunched by apprehension. Plus, I lose all sense of space and where objects are as soon as I shut my eyes. For all I know, I could accidentally kiss her nose.

Luckily it lands on her mouth.

It’s hasty, like jumping into cold water and then immediately regretting it. For a second I taste the salt and the seaweed and the tiny grains of sand swept together by the ocean current. Afterwards I’m running, putting enough distance between us so even the dying waves can’t touch me. I recoil with all my worries unfurling, a quilt pulled apart by its threads.

Perhaps the worst reaction I could receive is the sad little smile spread across Neptune’s face. Her eyebrows are tweaked to transmit pity. I’ve known since day one of this camp that her opinion of me is bleak but seeing it portrayed so plainly is still maddening. I feel injured. I feel betrayed. I split open my arm and expected it not to bleed. Now there’s filth everywhere.

Neptune’s lips part as if she’s about to speak but she’s interrupted by a fit of coughing. Her hand rises to her mouth, clenching into a fist and blocking the spit that dribbles from it. The hacking sounds pretty serious but she anticipates my concern and dismisses it with the wave of her other hand.

“I’m fine,” she says between coughs. “I’m fine!”

The episode dissolves but I remain with the uncomfortable sensation of being pinned to a board by nails. My metaphorical wings are in the midst of a desperate flutter but they aren’t strong enough to counter the weight of my oppressors.

As if nothing of importance had transpired between us, Neptune laces her fingers through mine and decides to guide me through another round. Shock dampens my reflexes but I transition after a few minutes, falling into a trance that consists of mimicking her steps.

“We were dancing,” Neptune says. She sounds reassuring, supportive. I realize she’s offering to share her strength if it’ll help me recover.

“When we kissed,” she continues, lifting our hands above our heads and then twirling until she’s right next to me. Her shoulder is pressed up against my chest.

“We were dancing when we kissed, my best friend and I.”

The fingers of her right hand unfold from mine and I can feel them through my shirt. Underneath my heart is ticking like an overworked machine.

“If you want to play pretend, too, we have time to kill.”

Her gaze is flirtatious but it’s lined with something else. What is that? Disappointment? Suspicion? Oh-I-just-feel-so-bad-for-this-pathetic-little-cub?

The inexperience in my actions is obvious. She’s in a league I’d never dare touch. Engaging her at all was asking for trouble, but I was enchanted by what’s off limits to me, by the bridge that our mutual misfortune had built between two parallel worlds.

Everyone imagines their first confession as simultaneously the climax of days of careful preparation and a natural flow rolling off of their tongue. Personally, I expected to hold someone in the air while I shouted about how much they meant to me. Even if it was almost certain that I’d be rejected, I wanted to ensure that the depth of my feelings was communicated.

“I love you, Neptune,” I murmur.

No fanfare, no breakdown: just the moan of an injured doe and a few tears wetting my cheeks.

The worst love is the love that festers in your lungs and makes every breath reek of rot; the love that hollows your bones so they rattle in cold weather and soften for the slightest expression of affection. So I thought it best if I professed, regardless of how weak, now before its roots latched onto my ribs and threatened to crush the machinery of my throat.

“Don’t use that name. You don’t know me,” Neptune answers. Her cynicism stings.

She has untangled herself from me but her body is still uncomfortable near. Her hands grip my shoulders.

“Just say you love. Who? It’s no one’s business. We don’t need to know, either. No one can tell you who you can and can not love, Jupiter. So love who you love. Why even try to understand it?”

“I love you, Neptune,” I repeat, sobbing. “I love _you_.”

My shoulders are starting to hurt but it’d rather she be rough than stop touching me. Actually, I kind of wish she’d just hit me, because she looks like she wants to.

“I hang around you because I can tell you’re a smart kid. Don’t act stupid now,” Neptune says. The anger trickling into her tone is evolving into animosity. “I’m fake. Everyone thinks I’m oblivious but I’ve planned every facet of my travesty. You know. You see straight through me, don’t you? Just enough to realize what’s going on. But that’s where it stops. I’m still just as fake to you as I am to everyone else. You can’t love me, _me_ , because the person you’re in love with is a fake.”

I can see she’s close to crying but it’s held back by her resilience. Her eyes glimmer, the skin around them red. Her mouth keeps switching between scowling and biting her lower lip.

“Don’t let that stop you, though. Everyone is fake. Everyone plays pretend. It’s the only way people can ever get along. And it works out fine for me. I can’t disappoint with who I’m not.”

I suck the snot dripping towards my mouth back into my nose, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt. As I blink, the world is dim and dizzy. Neptune watches me with the duality of defiance and forgiveness. She’s on the fence on how to proceeed, prepared to walk away if I insist on pushing any further.

“All right,” I mumble, still tuning my voice, testing how far it can go before it cracks. “All right. I’ll play. Let’s play.”

My vision adjusts and I realize that Neptune’s expression is now entirely devoid of emotion. Like the surface of a river that freezes in winter, she is a mirror and a clean slate. It occurs to me how much I’ve projected onto her; how she actively and eagerly facilitated it.

“You can be the groom today then,” says the girl from summer scouts that I may or may not love. “I haven’t been the bride in so long, I actually kind of miss it.”

Laughter bubbles from her chest but it’s enveloped in a sardonic air that makes my skin crawl. Her grin is insincere, the way she nudges my arm with her knuckles means nothing. She’s playing the part perfectly but there’s no passion. And I feel like a show where all the magic tricks have been explained and the audience can’t be bothered to appear mystified.

This is what she meant, the grim reality of how she sees herself. Now I’m forced to see her this way, too. No riddles, no secrets, just a series of gestures and sounds produced by a body that is thoroughly misplaced. It’s as if she had, quite unceremoniously, slipped into a state of dissociation where her thoughts and actions float in separate spheres.

I snipped the bud in my chest but it turns out there was a second seed nestled safely in the crannies of my limbs. Now it flourishes through my flesh and interferes with their coordination. What I want to do is not what I can do. What I can do is not what I want to do.

Roses in a vase supplied ocean water will rot with the salt caked into their veins.

“Just kidding. Of course I don’t,” Neptune clarifies. There’s that laughter again, like insult on top of injury.

“But you seem like the groom type, so I guess I’ll just have to take the other one. Even in a game of pretend you have to know how to act the part or there’s really no point in playing at all.”

Is she right? I’ve never pictured myself as the manly type. Well, I’ve been called a butch before, but it’s not like it was intentional. If we’re going by stereotypes, she’s so much more of a man. Or am I just imagining her as a man I could marry?

Marriage is the sacred union of a man and a woman. That’s a text book description, how I learned it in school. The ceremony can be in a church or a purely legal affair. The bride wears a dress and the groom a suit. Every girl looks forward to the day she’ll be wed.

I can feel it around me, a set of dark, formal clothes and a piece of parchment describing the parameters of the agreement.  Vows are exchanged to establish the ties of commitment. Fates are sealed. The beginning of a new chapter in a new life. The participants shed their past skin and the rules of the game are rewritten. Adulthood, its responsibilities and privileges, is in full bloom.

A thought surfaces in a hallway where thoughts become reality.

“The first time I saw a wedding was on the day of my baptism,” I say. “The bride’s dress was pure white. I remember because I kept an image of it in my head throughout the service. I wanted to have clean thoughts when I was baptized.”

Whether she is interested in my speech or not, Neptune is an attentive actor. She performs a curtsy –complete this time–, moving her hands around as if she were holding the hems of a huge skirt. Her eyes remain on me, wide like twin moons, eclipses I can’t see through, just hurt myself trying.

“Dad told me that a girl has to look out for herself. There’s so much that can go wrong when you’re a girl that isn’t careful.”

Neptune tucks my hair behind my left ear, then places one hand on my chest and the other cups my face.

“Did he tell you what exactly is so bad?” she asks.

I shake my head. Neptune’s finger is tracing my jawline. She’s leaning in and somehow I’m not running away. Probably because this is pretend. In fact, Neptune doesn’t even feel here anymore. I’m alone with my terrible thoughts of her wanting to kiss me.

“Ideally, he says, I should wait until marriage. Everything will be fine with a strong man to protect me.”

Standing on the tip of her toes, Neptune bats her eyelashes coquettishly. Underneath her the floorboards are wailing.

“When I was baptized, the priest dropped me,” she says. “Then he panicked or something because it took him a while to get me out. I was underwater for too long. I often feel like I’m on the verge of drowning. Messed up, isn’t it? How some stupid priest dropped me and I still feel myself asphyxiate.”

I snap my hair tie against my wrist. Neptune smells like those bottles at boutiques advertised as “ocean spray,” but with the giddy cherry tang of a certain brand of cheap liquor added. I’m being swept back into the current but I no longer have the desire to flounder. I can float like driftwood or sink, whatever suits her convenience.

“I’m married now, so everything will be all right. I can do anything I want. Right, Neptune?”

“You can do anything while pretending. None of it is real. None of it matters. You could be doing anything with anyone. There doesn’t have to be any evidence.”

Who says that? Who wraps their arms around my ribs and whose fingers feel warm against my spine? Those are details that I, as an author, am too exhausted to coin. It could be anyone. It could be no one. Maybe I’m embracing myself. I’m so pitiful and sad I’ve imagined someone holding me but in reality it’s just my own arms. I always need to feel held. Someone is kissing me but my mind’s on being held.

Venus should be back soon.


End file.
